The use of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a fast growing trend in the telephony industry, displacing circuit switch analog and digital telecommunications systems. In VoIP, analog speech signals received from an audio source are digitized, compressed, and translated into Internet Protocol (IP) data packets for transmission over an IP data network such as the Internet. Benefits of VoIP include cost savings and new communications applications. For example, VoIP can be used to bypass the toll structure imposed by the service providers that operate the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or used to embed voice mail messages into user e-mail.
A VoIP application running on a computer is often referred to as a “softphone”, “VoIP telephony application”, or a “VoIP phone”. In a typical configuration, a wired or wireless headset connected to the computer is used in conjunction with the softphone to receive and transmit speech. In the prior art, softphones indicate incoming calls by displaying an icon on the computer display and outputting an audio tone audible through the headset speaker.
However, incoming call notifications are often missed by users of softphones. As the use of computer-based softphones increases, there is a need for improved methods and systems for notifying users of incoming softphone calls.